The Healthy Campus Alberta team would like to offer a huge thank you to all the 2025 HCA Wellness Summit attendees, presenters, volunteers and community partners who contributed to one of the most memorable summits yet. We are already excited to be planning the next summit returning to Edmonton in May of 2026 and we hope to see you there!
Read the 2025 HCA Wellness Summit: Summary and Community Report!
At the summit closing, we asked HCA attendees what they wanted to celebrate. Here are just some examples of what they shared:
- Inclusion of multiple perspectives on mental health – Red Crow Community College
- Being here! – U of A
- Getting to hear from passionate student leaders – their voices matter! – BVC
- So many new tools that I can use in my work to support students and myself – Portage
- New connections and perspectives – U of A
- Sharing Knowledge – U of C
- The vulnerability of the student athletes. As someone who is not athletic, and have only seen athletes in a partying/celebration context, I had never considered the potential mental health impacts of having to balance not just academics, but also athletic commitments & pressures – U of C
- Having a strong, smart, passionate, and kind community of colleagues to learn from and laugh with – RDP
- Strength of Michaela & other speakers for being authentic & sharing their stories – U of A
- My own personal resiliency with mental health challenges, from my days as an undergraduate student to more recently. I now work in mental health and wish to give back to those like me – U of C
- The small wins – U of C
- Putting myself out there and out of my comfort zone – U of A
- Having a mix of service providers, researchers, students present to participate, share, and connect – U of A
- The ongoing desire to make post-secondary life more fulfilling and balanced for students through the pursuit of overall wellness – MRU
Participants also shared some general feedback about the summit in the follow up survey:
- This was my first Summit, and I was not disappointed. The focus on connection and student lead initiatives was appreciated. The ability to hear from others in the field of post-secondary mental health was helpful. If there was a way to create a space and time specific to collaboration would be fantastic. The approachability of the presenters I feel is key to how successful I found the Summit to be, the time they offered to answer questions and engage was very insightful and their humility gave credibility to their messages.
- Really enjoyed the experience. felt very comfortable. Great atmosphere for learning.
- I think the Summit helped me meet people from my organization and others that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I really enjoyed the session on student resiliency and bridging partnerships.
- This was the best summit so far! Thank you for all of your important work!
- My perspective on how to engage students in program evaluation has broadened and I feel I have evidence to bring to my leaders to advocate for in person focused group chats instead of holding onto traditional survey methods.
- This summit has opened my eyes and has turned up the volume on my voice!
- Learning and hearing from diverse speakers helped to keep me informed and aligning both my Indigenous ways of knowing and being to the Western world.
- I really enjoyed the event, the celebration and all the take aways.
- I had not previously considered other areas like security for opportunities for training around crisis-intervention and trauma-informed care. This is a great idea, and I am glad to have learned about it through the summit.
- Learned a lot from the Indigenous speakers! They had a really great perspective on post-secondary issues and had clear action items
- I find this Summit useful to my practice. I like hearing about what others are doing, and I like the opportunities to collaborate and connect. I really appreciate the hard work you all put into this event. Please keep it up.
- I really enjoyed the format, the journal and pens available. The Zen Den was amazing addition. I cannot say enough good things about the conference, well done.
- I really appreciate the overall message that it takes a village to support student wellness and mental health. For so many years this has been on counsellors with a lot of pressure and not enough resources.
We’re excited to meet you at upcoming 2025-2026 events!